Gears 3 Beta Having Network Hiccups, Epic Switching To New Servers

If you're duking it out on the Gears of War 3 beta at the moment, you might be witnessing some strange events. Your character might be teleporting across the map at random intervals, flashing in and out of cover or suddenly in pieces on the floor. It's OK! Put the gun down, and breathe deeply. Epic's just sorting out the netcode as they install the brand new dedicated servers to replace the P2P system Gears often utilizes - not to much success, mind.

And according to Rod Fergusson's Twitter feed, having spent the best part of a day integrating them, the dedicated servers are now up and running! However, in order to enjoy their silky smoothness, you'll have to restart the beta in order to re-synch. Up until now, the Gears 3 beta had been running on a P2P system, which had been in much better shape than the code utilized in the second game. However, now Epic has rolled out the dedicated servers, it should finally put to rest seemingly perennial Gears issues like host-advantage and lag. We'll keep you updated on this as it develops.